News

H. Lundbeck A/S powered ahead in the first quarter of 2017, building on a rolling restructuring programme initiated in the second half of 2015 that has led to increased sales and improved profitability.

Novo Nordisk A/S has revised upward its financial forecast for 2017 following a good performance by Victoza, its glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medicine for diabetes in the first quarter. The outlook for both sales and operating profit have been raised slightly.

The Grünenthal Group has opened a new office in greater Boston, Massachusetts to grow its business in the area of therapies for pain, gout and inflammation. Based in Aachen, Germany, Grünenthal had 2016 revenue of €1.4 billion. Its goal is to become a €2 billion company by 2022.

Evotec AG ended the 2017 first quarter with a broader revenue base, two new drug discovery agreements and Novo A/S as a strategic shareholder to help the company execute its strategy as a service provider and research partner for the global pharma industry.

The Roche Group’s checkpoint antibody, Tecentriq (atezolizumab), has missed the primary endpoint of overall survival in a Phase 3 trial, designed to confirm the drug’s efficacy in urothelial cancer and convert an earlier accelerated approval in the US to a full approval.

The first of two pivotal Phase 3 trials of a new anti-interleukin-13 drug for severe asthma has failed to meets its primary endpoint of a significant reduction in the annual asthma exacerbation rate, AstraZeneca Plc announced on 10 May.

Poxel SA has reported positive data from a Phase 2b study in Japan of imeglimin, its treatment for Type 2 diabetes. The primary endpoint of the trial was met, and was more pronounced in the Japanese patients than had been the case in similar Phase 2b trials in the US and the EU.

In a reversal of the usual sequence of events, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a new drug for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) two years after the same treatment was authorised for marketing in Japan and South Korea.

The European Medicines Agency has issued guidance to companies with centralised marketing authorisations spelling out what they need to do to be in compliance with EU medicines law once Britain leaves the union.

A Phase 3 trial of an experimental drug for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, laquinimod, has failed to meet its primary endpoint which was to show an improvement in the time to confirmed disease progression.